That's what makes audio artist Halsey Burgund's new sound installation at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum such eye-opening fun.

For people who grew up being shushed in museums, Burgund's ``Scapes'' lets visitors eavesdrop via a smart phone on other visitors' conversations and hear their reactions to many of the park's outdoor artworks.

Burgund has custom-built an iPhone application just for the DeCordova that lets visitors listen to an auditory tapestry of comments, natural sounds and music recorded by himself and others on their tours of the 35-acre park.

Museum staffer Susie Stockwell explained that Burgund's free application can be downloaded from the Apple App store onto any smart phone. ``You can be part of the installation,'' she said.

Burgund's ``Scapes'' is the third project in DeCordova's PLATFORM series, which will comprise nine solo exhibits by early and mid-career artists from New England and across the country. Stockwell said those artists are encouraged to create work that enhances visitors' experiences of the park's physical, social and creative landscape.

Burgund's ``Scapes'' will be available through Nov. 14.

In a sense, ``Scapes'' lets visitors wander across lawns, along walkways and up gentle slopes listening in on something like a conference call with other visitors and catching lyrical snatches of comments they recorded.

Nearly everyone has tagged along on the fringes of a group tour at a museum, passing silent judgment on members who are trying to impress each other, sneak photos or trying to find a restroom.

I am of an age and generation that regards digital innovations like smart phones with the same alarmed confusion as the apes confronting the mysterious monolith in the opening scenes of ``2001: A Space Odyssey.'' I need my daughter's help to retrieve voice mail on my cell phone.

For people like me, museum staff provide loaner phones and a blessedly lucid explanation on how to navigate Burgund's ``Scapes.''

When Stockwell gave me a phone, I took it expecting it to snap my fingers like a mousetrap or just do something I couldn't figure out.

A helpful Visitor Service staffer named Kirk Girard explained how to use it with the patience of someone with very old grandparents. He even tried to show me how with a touch of my fingers I could add my own observations to ``Scapes'' or listen separately to men's and women's comments.

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I just nodded and thought, ``Not this time, sonny. I'll just listen.''

By a curious coincidence, I'd arrived an hour after an eye examination in which my pupils were dilated and so sensitive to light, I had to wear large Ray Charles-like sunglasses the optometrist gave me.

Unable to literally see the sculptures with normal vision, I immersed myself in swirling snippets of other peoples voices which added a new thought-provoking dimension to my visit.

There is no set tour or required sequence to view the sculptures.

``Scapes'' ever-changing audio score is location-specific so wherever you go, you'll hear voices reacting to that site as if you were looking over their shoulders.

Burgund has put the ``ease'' back in eavesdropping.

As I stepped into the hot afternoon, a chipper voice from my borrowed phone urged me to ``Enjoy your voyage through the park.''

Voices chimed in on one another, sometimes responding to each other but sometimes overlapping in a sort of poetic free association.

As I approached Chakaia Booker's rubber tire installation, ``Take Out,'' a woman shouted from my phone, ``Hey, see the chipmunk.''

Over the next hour, I assigned personalities to the most recurring and recognizable voices.

There was Pompous Woman and Obvious Guy who was never anything but predictable.

I heard several times from Excitable Child or a voice I came to think of as Thoughtful Aunty. I imagined she was someone about my age, shaking off inhibitions about the strangeness of walking through a park listening in on strangers.

And there was Mushroom Girl -- more about her later -- and Yosemite Joe who brought up his recent backpacking trip a little too often for my grumpy tastes.

Standing before Fletcher Benton's accurately titled ``Doughnut with 3 Balls,'' Pompous Woman opined, ``This sort of Constructionism has been out of fashion since 1985.''

Like your car's GPS barking ``Recalculating'' as it tries to determine your location, the recorded voices sometimes took a while to figure out which sculpture I was looking at.

Seeming to share my thoughts, a new woman said, ``This is just weird. How does it know where I am?''

A man said he liked that seeming hesitation because it showed ``the limits of technology.'' ``You have to look,'' he said. ``It makes it like a treasure hunt.''

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I was thinking Ilan Averbuch's hard-to-define ``Skirts and Pants (After Duchamp)'' looked like the frame of a Japanese temple when Pompous Woman chimed in, ``It's uncomfortably reverential.''

A man with a soothing voice interjected, ``I think when you're older, you don't walk in the grass enough''; I hoped to hear from him again.

At Sol LeWitt's soaring ``Tower,'' a woman announced with wonderment in her voice, ``I'm standing by a sculpture of the Empire State Building.'' A man who might have been her companion added, ``It's a stack of dominoes in my heart.'' Another woman said, ``It looks like it might have been made of Leggos.''

Some voices just responded whimsically to the sculptures.

As I photographed Marianna Pineda's striking bronze statue of a woman called ``Eve Celebrant,'' a young woman said, ``It reminds me of my neighbor who does tai chi in her yard.''

A new and cheery voice announced, ``It's a beautiful day to come for a picnic.'' The voices stopped and the only sound was a fork or spoon scraping across a plate.

Some visitors' reactions to certain sculpture made me chide myself for being too prosaic.

``Did that alligator eat someone?'' asked a child on seeing Reuben Nakian's enigmatic 1954 bronze sculpture near the bottom of a hill.

I'd been thinking to myself that Christopher Frost bronze piece looked like the top hat the capitalist token wears in Monopoly when a woman, maybe Mushroom Girl, rhapsodized ``It's a hat with steps spiraling around. You wonder what happens when a person gets to the top of the staircase.''

Approaching one of the park's most striking pieces, Richard Rosenblum's ``Venusvine'' near the top of a hill, one guy said it reminded him of a character in ``Toy Story.'' His friend remarked, ``It looks like an Ent in `Lord of the Rings.''

The robust voice I came to think of as Yosemite Joe said, ``A woodland figure overlooking everything. It reminds me of backpacking in Yosemite three weeks ago. I don't know how to describe it. It's like being alone in nature so long you start to feel nature.''

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At the top of a hill, an imposing, thick-featured bronze baby's head by John Wilson rested on a stone slab like a Toltec deity.

In her recognizable breathless voice, Mushroom Girl recalled, ``I remember coming here as a little girl. In college we ate mushrooms. I remember laying down in a truck. I ended up talking with°...''

Somehow the connection lapsed and I couldn't tell whether she ended up talking with ``the artist'' or ``the sky.''

Fiddling with the borrowed smart phone, I decided to come back when I'd learned how to record my own thoughts and tell Mushroom Girl, Yosemite Joe and anyone else who cared that I'd enjoyed their company and hoped to hear from them again.

Even Pompous Woman.

THE ESSENTIALS:

The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, 51 Sandy Pond Road, Lincoln, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday and on selected Mondays holidays. The Sculpture Park is open year round during daylight hours.

General admission during museum hours is $12 for adults, $8 for senior citizens, students and youth ages 6-12. Children age 5 and under, Lincoln residents and active duty military personnel and their relatives are admitted free.

Guided tours of the museum's galleries take place at 1 p.m. Thursday and 2 p.m. Sunday. All guided tours are free with campus admission.